Fantasy: Deep-Lloyd - WR Efficiency and Fantasy Output

During the Eagles/Packers game, I had a brief Twitter exchange with Chet Gresham from over at Razzball.com regarding dropped passes (DPs). I put up a few stats, as I tend to do, about the Green Bay WR corps and DPs. Specifically, I gave the DP totals for each of the four main Packers wide outs this season – Greg Jennings had 7, Donald Driver had 6, James Jones had 5, and Jordy Nelson had 7. In response, Chet asked what percentage of targets did each player drop. This is a great point that can’t be underscored enough, and is key to evaluating WR efficiency. With the target stats found here on PFF.com, I calculated Jennings at 5.8%, Driver at 7.3%, Jones at 5.9%, and Nelson at 11.3%. So while Nelson and Jennings have the same amount of DPs, Jennings was nearly twice as efficient with his targets than Nelson.

This exchange really got me to thinking about the importance of DPs. We often hear announcers and fantasy analysts talk about them, but what sort of impact do drops have on fantasy production? Is there any link between efficiency and fantasy output among WRs? How does this data correlate to targets, and in turn, how do targets translate into fantasy production? To begin to answer these questions, I want to first look at the most and least efficient WRs in terms of dropped pass percentage (DP%). For my sample, I took WRs with at least 85 targets since none of the top-20 scoring WRs in standard scoring fantasy leagues had less than 85 targets. Here are the 10 WRs with the lowest DP%:

Interesting, only three of the 26 WRs with over 100 targets on the season made this list – Fitzgerald, Lloyd, and Boldin. Among wide outs with at least 100 targets, the average DP% was 6.2%, so these guys displayed some great hands this season. Another noteworthy point about this list is that only three of these players finished among the top-20 in fantasy scoring – Fitzgerald, Lloyd, and Manningham. Now let’s take a look at the 10 WRs with the highest DP%:

If you owned any of these guys this past season, these numbers likely won’t surprise you. One name that may stick out is Wes Welker. After posting a DP% of 3.9 last season, his number skyrocketed to 11.0 this year after he tallied 13 DPs. Another interesting name is Miles Austin. In his brilliant 2009 campaign, Austin dropped just 2.5% of his 120 targets. This season, he almost quadrupled that number to 9.6%. Something else that I found very interesting is that four of these players finished among the top-20 WRs in fantasy scoring – Jackson, Austin, Johnson, and Williams. So more players at the bottom of DP% hit the top-20 than at the top.

So what does this tell us? Well, not much yet. But in conjunction with our DP% data, I would also like to use another measurement that I find useful – points per target. Let’s take a look at the top-20 scoring WRs in standard fantasy leagues:

So right off the bat, we see that Mike Wallace led this group in points per target. A little bit behind Wallace are DeSean Jackson, Manningham, Greg Jennings, and Dwayne Bowe. Pound for pound, these guys did more with each target in terms of fantasy output than anyone else in the top-20. However, Jackson hurt his output this season with a DP% of 12.1%. Manningham, for as effective as he was, played second or third fiddle for the Giants all season and only saw 86 targets. And not to take anything away from Bowe or Jennings, as both had stellar seasons, but I want to call your attention to the top of the list.

To the complete shock of many in the fantasy world, Brandon Lloyd led all WRs in fantasy scoring. Despite the fact that he went undrafted in 99.9% of leagues, I assure you that this was no fluke. The guy had a darn good season. Lloyd racked up the 4th most targets among WRs, and was the only wide out with over 135 targets to play less than 900 snaps. He displayed solid efficiency with a DP% of just 2.7, placing him among the top-10 lowest in the league. Lloyd also managed to score nearly 1.4 points per target, which ranks him just behind the top guys. When used together, these stats provide a useful way of measuring WR success and show us just how special of a season this was for Lloyd.